Massachusetts Senate Race Close, Brown and Coakley Divided on Health Care
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
January 13, 2010
Boston, MA (LifeNews.com) — The special election in Massachusetts for the Senate seat the late pro-abortion Sen. Ted Kennedy occupied is neck-and-neck. A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of likely voters in the state finds Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley attracting 49% of the vote.
Her rival, state Senator Scott Brown, picks up 47%, three percent say they will vote for an independent candidate, and two percent are undecided.
The poll shows movement in the direction of Brown and away from Coakley, who has the endorsement of pro-abortion groups like Emily’s List.
A week ago, the overall results showed Coakley leading by a 50% to 41% margin.
The Rasmussen poll shows Coakley is supported by 77% of Democrats while Brown picks up the vote from 88% of Republicans. Among voters not affiliated with either major party, Brown leads 71% to 23%.
While Brown supports abortion, he also backs several major limits on abortions and is getting support because he has pledged to vote against the health care bill in Congress that contains massive abortion funding and the promotion of assisted suicide.
Ed Morrissey, a conservative writer at Hot Air, cotes the importance of the Massachusetts Senate race on the debate over the pro-abortion health care bill — because Brown could wind up becoming the 41st vote to defeat the pro-abortion bill.
He points out how potential delays in getting the House and Senate to vote on the final version of the bill put a kink in the plans to defeat Brown or to delay certifying his potential election victory.
"They have already begun laying a public-relations foundation for delaying Scott Brown’s entry into the Senate if he manages to beat Martha Coakley," he writes.
"They can’t delay it forever, though, and the longer the Democrats go without an agreement in principle [on a health care bill and vote], the more likely Brown will be able to cast the 41st vote against cloture and stop the whole thing in its tracks," Morrissey adds.
Kathryn Lopez of National Review also wrote on the race today and cites the importance of Brown’s views on issues like health care that will come before the Senate.
"Martha Coakley is an abortion-rights activist with a long and devoted record to the cause — opposing a ban on partial-birth abortion, working in her free time to help teens bypass their parents to obtain abortions — while Scott Brown, who has made clear he has no interest in seeing Roe v. Wade overturned, is a friend to pro-life activists on issues that could actually come before him," she writes.
She says one pro-life advocate told her Brown is "not perfect, but she’s awful."
"Brown is someone who can work with pro-life activists," Lopez writes. "He doesn’t pretend to be someone he’s not."
"The truth reveals Scott Brown to be a candidate who’s open to common sense, which leads him to make common cause with pro-life activists. He’s not like the many who were once pro-life but became pro-choice and compromised human lives for political gain," she said.
Brown and Coakley have already feuded multiple times on abortion and pro-life issues.
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